Howard Buskirk

FCC and NTIA officials defended the citizens broadband radio service band as potentially offering a model for future sharing, during an FCBA spectrum pipeline forum Monday. Last week, CTIA questioned whether CBRS, often cited as the potential sharing model of the future, is a suitable replacement for exclusive, licensed spectrum (see 2211140062). CBRS advocates have fired back.

FCC commissioners approved a draft order that would further clamp down on gear from Chinese companies, preventing the sale of yet-to-be authorized equipment in the U.S., FCC officials said. The item was subsequently removed from the public circulation list. The draft order, circulated by Chair Jessica Rosenworcel Oct. 5 (see 2210070083), proposed to ban the FCC authorization of gear from companies including Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications, Hikvision and Dahua Technology (see 2210130076). The FCC faced a Nov. 11 statutory deadline under the Secure Equipment Act, requiring the agency to stop authorizing equipment by companies the commission decides are a national security risk (see 2111120058).

The FCC’s final order approving new outage reporting rules, approved 4-0 Thursday (see 2211170051), addresses at length concerns raised by CTIA and other industry commenters, based on a side-by-side comparison with the draft order. Because of a field hearing after the commissioners meeting Thursday, FCC staff didn’t have a press briefing on changes to the items while on the 10th floor. The order was released Friday.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Thursday more changes to FCC rules are possible, after Hurricanes Fiona and Ian, speaking at the start of a “field hearing” on some lessons learned from those storms. Rosenworcel noted the FCC held a similar hearing after Ida last year (see 2110260067) and later made the wireless industry’s voluntary resiliency cooperative framework mandatory and expanded roaming requirements. The framework was a hot topic at that hearing. The big topic at the Thursday hearing was improving coordination between power companies and communications providers.

FCC commissioners approved rules to improve the delivery of outage information to public safety answering points 4-0 Thursday, largely as circulated by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Last week, APCO, CTIA, wireless carriers, ATIS and others sought a few changes to the draft order (see 2211140072). The order was approved before commissioners held a virtual field hearing on other potential changes that could be made to disaster-related rules (see 2211170079).

FirstNet’s band 14 license “expired” Tuesday without being renewed by the FCC. But FCC officials said there’s no reason to worry -- FirstNet’s current license remains active as long as the renewal application is pending in the agency’s universal licensing system. The FirstNet Authority board met Wednesday, but members didn’t express concerns about the renewal. Authority officials said the initial band 14 deployment is now scheduled to be completed in March.

Aviation groups and companies wrote top administration officials seeking to extend 5G C-band mitigation measures agreed to by AT&T and Verizon, as airlines work to retrofit aircraft. The letter said negotiations with carriers may not be enough to guarantee safety and warned that talks could be at an impasse. AT&T and Verizon voluntarily agreed in June to continue interference mitigations around airports through July 2023 (see 2206210059), but the aviation interests ask that protections be extended through the end of 2023. The new restrictions could apply to other carriers, including T-Mobile and UScellular, that take possession next year of the licenses they bought in the C-band auction. Their bids were dwarfed by Verizon’s and AT&T’s, but T-Mobile committed $9.3 billion to C-band spectrum and UScellular almost $1.3 billion. The letter was addressed to National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and top officials at the Commerce and Transportation departments, the FAA and the NTIA, but not the FCC. The FCC declined comment Wednesday. “After a year of discussions and despite accommodations made by all parties, we are now seven months away from the next deadline, with significant risks still unresolved,” said the letter, dated Tuesday: “We believe that by finding accommodations now, we can prevent another last-minute herculean intervention by the Administration and major disruption to our air transport system.” The aviation industry supports 5G deployment, but “we will not compromise aviation safety,” the letter said. The letter notes the FAA verified that certain aircraft radio altimeters (RAs) are susceptible to interference from 5G signals. “Since January 2022 the FAA has documented over 100 FAA incidents of potential 5G interference, the majority of which were found to have a direct RA impact resulting in safety alerts by systems such as the Terrain Avoidance Warning System,” the letter said. It said that “US government agencies do not appear to be on the same page with respect to these safety issues” and “aviation stakeholders are caught in the middle.” The coalition signing the letter included the Aerospace Industries Association, the Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute, the Air Line Pilots Association, Airbus, the Aircraft Electronics Association, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Airlines for America, Boeing, Collins Aerospace, Garmin, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, the International Air Transport Association, the National Air Carrier Association and Thales. AT&T and Verizon didn't comment. “You should expect us to have C band pretty much everywhere we have the 4G network today,” Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis said at a Morgan Stanley European conference Wednesday. He wasn't asked about the aviation industry letter. Verizon covered 160 million POPs with C band Q3 and expects to hit 200 million Q1, he said. “The team has done a phenomenal job building [C-band] out since we started a little over a year and a half ago,” he said. C-band capital expenditure will peak this year at as much as $6 billion and “will come down next year and ... the year after as well,” Ellis said.

Ensuring U.S. leadership in the development of telecom and other standards must be a top national priority, said National Institute of Standards and Technology Director Laurie Locascio during a Telecommunications Industry Association virtual conference Tuesday. Locascio and other speakers said industry, not governments, should lead on standards.

A new study by CTIA and Recon Analytics questions whether citizens broadband radio service spectrum, often cited as the potential sharing model of the future, is a suitable replacement for exclusive, licensed spectrum. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is moving on release of a national spectrum strategy (see 2209260048). Carriers already said they hope the strategy will lay out bands that can be cleared for licensed use. Wi-Fi advocates fired back.

5G is becoming an increasingly important part of how businesses communicate, though what the 5G world will look like is still taking shape, speakers said Monday during a Fierce Wireless virtual enterprise 5G conference. “We’re still in the early days,” said Howard Wu, U.S. general manager for equipment maker Quanta Cloud Technology. “A lot of the enterprises, institutions, large organizations are trying to figure out how to use 5G as an enabled technology,” he said. “5G isn’t an aim in and of itself, it’s an enabler,” said Macquarie Capital’s Oliver Bradley. “The key is what is it you’re ... trying to achieve,” he said. Historically, the cost of capital was high for the kinds of companies now active in 5G, with investors expecting higher rewards because of higher risks, he said: “That attracts a certain cost of capital that’s fairly expensive,” he said. In recent years, traditional infrastructure investors, who are more averse to risk, are now viewing “the digital world” as “the next … utility,” Bradley said. Digital connectivity is now viewed as “an essential service” comparable to water or electricity, he said. “It’s not just a nice-to-have, it’s not just a tech, it’s not just a fashion or a fad,” he said. Enterprise customers are looking for a “seamless, cell-service experience,” more like traditional consumer wireless than the business-to-business communications of the past, “which traditionally had delays and many manual processes and steps,” said Mike Bimm, ServiceNow global head-telecom, media and technology architecture. “As the infrastructure complexity and the service offerings grow, you need to have efficient, automated processes, and that need only increases,” he said. Companies want continuity as they invest in 5G and smart buildings, said Steve Carroll, global account director at communications gear maker Belden. Belden cares about “scalability,” he said: “What are we building today that is going to make sure that we’re not going to have to rip and replace it three years from now?”